Nightingales Quotes, Quotations, and Sayings

25 Nightingales Quotes
[1-25] 
“I have head the nightingale herself.”
Agesilaus, the Great Quotes
Source: when asked to listed to a man imitate the nightingale, see Plutarch's "Life of Agesilaus"
“Hark! ah, the nightingale-- The tawny-throated! Hark from that moonlit cedar what a burst! What triumph! hark!--what pain! . . . . Again--thou hearest? Eternal passion! Eternal pain!”
Matthew Arnold Quotes
Source: Philomela (l. 32)
“For as nightingales do upon glow-worms feed, So poets live upon the living light.”
Philip James Bailey Quotes
Source: Festus (sc. Home)
“As it fell upon a day In the merry month of May, Sitting in a pleasant shade Which a grove of myrtles made.”
Richard Barnfield Quotes
Source: Address to the Nightingale
“It is the hour when from the boughs The nightingale's high note is heard; It is the hour when lovers' vows Seem sweet in every whispered word; And gentle winds, and waters near, Make music to the lonely ear. Each flower the dews have lightly wet, And in the sky the stars are met, And on the wave is deeper blue, And on the leaf a browner hue, And in the heaven that clear obscure, So softly dark, and darkly pure. Which follows the decline of day, As twilight melts beneath the moon away.”
Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron) Quotes
Source: Parisina (st. 1)
“"Most musical, most melancholy" bird! A melancholy bird! Oh! idle thought! In nature there is nothing melancholy.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes
Source: The Nightingale
“'Tis the merry nightingale That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates With fast thick warble his delicious notes, As he were fearful that an April night Would be too short for him to utter forth His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul Of all its music!”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes
Source: The Nightingale (l.43)
“Sweet bird, that sing'st away the early hours, Of winter's past or coming void of care, Well pleased with delights which present are, Fair seasons, budding sprays, sweet-smelling flowers.”
William Drummond (1) Quotes
Source: Sonnet--To a Nightingale
“Like a wedding-song all-melting Sings the nightingale, the dear one.”
Heinrich Heine Quotes
Source: Book of Songs--Donna Clara
“The nightingale appear'd the first, And as her melody she sang, The apple into blossom burst, To life the grass and violets sprang.”
Heinrich Heine Quotes
Source: Book of Songs--New Spring (no. 9)
“Where the nightingale doth sing Not a senseless, tranced thing, But divine melodious truth.”
John Keats Quotes
Source: Ode--Bards of Passion and of Mirth
“Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:--do I wake or sleep?”
John Keats Quotes
Source: To a Nightingale
“Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown.”
John Keats Quotes
Source: To a Nightingale
“Soft as Memnon's harp at morning, To the inward ear devout, Touched by light, with heavenly warning Your transporting chords ring out. Every leaf in every nook, Every wave in every brook, Chanting with a solemn voice Minds us of our better choice.”
John Keble Quotes
Source: The Nightingale
“To the red rising moon, and loud and deep The nightingale is singing from the steep.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes
Source: Keats
“What bird so sings, yet does so wail? O, 'tis the ravish'd nightingale-- Jug, jug, jug, jug--tereu, she cries, And still her woes at midnight rise.”
John Lyly (Lylie or Lyllie) Quotes
Source: The Songs of Birds
“Sweet bird that shunn'st the nose of folly, Most musical, most melancholy! Thee, chauntress, oft, the woods among, I woo, to hear thy even-song.”
John Milton Quotes
Source: Il Penseroso (l. 61)
“O nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still; Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart dost fill While the jolly hours lead on propitious May.”
John Milton Quotes
Source: Sonnet--To the Nightingale
“Thy liquid notes that close the eye of day First heard before the shallow cuckoo's bill, Portend success in love.”
John Milton Quotes
Source: Sonnet--To the Nightingale
“I said to the Nightingale: "Hail, all hail! Pierce with thy trill the dark, Like a glittering music-spark, When the earth grows pale and dumb."”
Dinah Maria Mulock (used pseudonym Mrs. Craik) Quotes
Source: A Rhyme About Birds
“Yon nightingale, whose strain so sweetly flows, Mourning her ravish'd young or much-loved mate, A soothing charm o'er all the valleys throws And skies, with notes well tuned to her and state.”
Francesco Petrarch Quotes
Source: To Laura in Death (sonnet XLIII)
“The sunrise wakes the lark to sing, The moonrise wakes the nightingale. Come, darkness, moonrise, everything That is so silent, sweet, and pale: Come, so ye wake the nightingale.”
Christina G. Rossetti Quotes
Source: Bird Raptures
“Hark! that's the nightingale, Telling the self-same tale Her song told when this ancient earth was young: So echoes answered when her song was sung In the first wooded vale.”
Christina G. Rossetti Quotes
Source: Twilight Calm (st. 7)
“The angel of spring, the mellow-throated nightingale.”
Christina G. Rossetti Quotes
Source: Twilight Calm (st. 7)
“The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark When neither is attended; and I think The nightingale, if she should sing by day When every goose is cackling, would be thought No better a musician than the wren. How many thing by season seasoned are To their right praise and true perfection!”
William Shakespeare Quotes
Source: The Merchant of Venice (Portia at V, i)